With summer air travel heating up, there are many reports of passengers having to get to the airport many hours beforehand. Fortunately, Premium Plaza Plaza Premium might offer up a respite. With over 250 locations in 70 countries, the brand is focused mostly on Asia and the Americas. In Canada, Plaza Premium has lounges in Toronto, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Edmonton and operates a lounge in Montreal.

Earlier in 2021, there was a bit of drama, with Plaza Premium leaving its long time partner Priority Pass and hooking up with DragonPass. This meant that for many credit card holders, excluding ones with American Express, count not access the lounge. Thankfully, Visa and Mastercard have migrated over to DragonPass, once again allowing access.

To make this review a bit easier, I will try to review the Vancouver, Edmonton and Toronto lounges; having been to Winnipeg once, I will say there is little reason to go back (Jk).

Vancouver (YVR)

Plaza Premium has 3.5 lounges lounges in YVR: two in Domestic Departures, one in International and 1 at US Departures that is temporarily closed. For the two domestic ones, please don’t go to the one near gate C29 as it is hardly a lounge.

Instead, make your way over to gate B17, where you can see the real lounge in action. Despite having limited it’s hours during the pandemic, it is now happily opened from 0500-2200, and serves alcohol past 1100.

Head up the stairs to check in by the bar; one added benefit is that you can sip flavored water whilst waiting for check in. Quickly make your way over to the food, which is the highlight of the lounge.

The food is buffet style, and includes a select of hot, cold and dessert foods. I went during breakfast, and so there was western style sausages, eggs and potatos in a self serve option.

On the cold side, there is typically a bunch of breads and cereals, with the ability to toast the bread (commonly known as a toaster).

There is also a salad section, with leafy greens, potato salad, sauces and a variety of toppings.

There is salt and pepper, soy sauce, ketchup, mustard and a variety of other salts should you fee the need to spice things up a bit.

There are utensils, bowls and places located between the hot and cold food section as well as in a rack at the bottom of the “start” of the buffet.

Finally, for those of us who are into deserts, there is a whole frozen section with a bunch of muffins, cakes and other sugar concoctions. Given there was milk and fruit as well, this is the highlight of the lounge.

On the drink side, there was a vending machine that provided a variety of soft drinks and water, along with a coffee machine that used real beans.

Once you’ve gotten all your food, it is now time to see where to sit. The lounge provides several different types of seating, beginning with a large island style table right in the middle of the lounge. I would like to take this moment to highlight that there are chargers, which is fantastic considering some smaller planes lack this functionality.

For a group, there are a variety of chairs in the lounge facing each other.

The chairs themselves are quite comfy, but do note they lack a pull out table to do work on your laptop.

To compensate for that, there are several other seating areas. One is a “quiet zone”, in which there are more functional desks to do work at.

There are also (formerly working) workstations at a long table, which also can double as extra seating.

While I was there, the lounge fortunately was not overcrowded, although I could see it getting there.

In the lounge, there is also a flight display board, which can be quite useful given the number of delays happening at the moment. Also, I find it funny that the signs are displayed in Mandarin, which makes sense given the demographics of Vancouver.

However, the best part of the lounge is to be able to survey the airport below, and admire its splendor.

So which lounge would I pick in all of Vancouver? As of now, it would be the Plaza Premium Vancouver, mainly because of the food. If the Maple Leaf Lounge in Vancouver ever had actual hot food, then I might change my mind. As the saying goes, go to Plaza Premium for food and the Maple Leaf Lounge for drinks.

Edmonton (YEG)

The Edmonton Airport is a smaller airport, and thus has a commensurately smaller Plaza Premium Lounge. Similarly to YVR, the US transborder lounge is closed, so travelers going to the US will simply need to concentrate on the massive amount of freedom they will be receiving soon. The other lounge, which basically covers everyone else, is open from 0500 to 1630 daily, which means it closes a fair bit earlier than Vancouver’s.

The Plaza Premium Lounge is situated right beside its direct competitor, the Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge. Note that the Air Canada lounge is open a fair bit later than the Plaza Premium lounge, in case you are flying out of Edmonton on an evening flight.

Moreso than its Vancouver counterpart, this is decorated in beige and brown, which in my opinion is not the best choice. However, it makes up for the fact with…cookies, which also happen to be brown.

Beyond the seating, the most notable section of this lounge is the bar.

Alberta does try to limit the number of drinks people have at a time to 4 - while I’ve never tried to test it, the staff do seem to be quite attentive.

The actual alcohol itself was mid-tier, and certainly not worth going wild over.

However, what would be okay with going wild over is the food. I, for some reason, and a sucker for large, semi-acceptable cafeteria food. Go figure. The Plaza Premium Lounge provided that, starting with rice, veggie chili and some sort of chicken stew. I have also seen broccoli beef on other days.

There is also a salad section, which was more bare than its Vancouver equivalent.

The final major food offering is the desert…and sandwich section. While I didn’t try the desert, the egg sandwich was exactly as expected: a bit dry and tasteless, but still had some egg in it.

As for the drink situation, there is both cold and hot water, juice, a variety of teas and for some reason cereals.

After grabbing your food, you might be wondering why there isn’t enough seating. Fear not, for there is a magic door which can walk through (which isn’t magical) beside the drink section. This effectively doubles the size of the lounge, and offers tables and other more practical seating arrangements.

Overall, this lounge is a quiet oasis to spend a couple hours before your flight. Do note that some gates at YEG are quite far away from the lounge, so monitor your flight to ensure you aren’t delayed. Otherwise, enjoy the view!